The backlash against urban sprawl in many areas of the country combined with a resurgence in the attractiveness of living in inner-city areas is prompting more developers to look toward infill housing developments in urban areas, and Greater Boston appears to be no exception.

Infill development, in which home builders fill in small parcels that have been passed over in previous years, will be the favored strategy among housing professionals nationwide in the coming year, according to the Urban Land Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit education center and research group.

The ULI came to this conclusion in its recently published annual Mid-Year Outlook, where it rated infill housing a better bet than senior citizen housing, high-income multifamily rental units, resorts, office construction and golf course communities.

“It seems to me, driving around the city, that every lot is being built on,” said Jeffrey Goodman, president of Watermark Development and Construction in Jamaica Plain. “Some of the lots are being built on because they were part of some kind of housing program to begin with, but other lots are being developed just because there is such a high demand right now.”

“The number of larger sites around Greater Boston is quite limited,” said M. David Lee, partner at Stull and Lee Architects of Boston and adjunct professor of urban design at Harvard University. “Because of that, people are looking hard at the small opportunities available for infill development.”

“I don’t think there are any large parcels left in neighborhoods like [Jamaica Plain], Roxbury and the South End,” said Lee, who is currently working with a group on new master plans for some of the city’s neighborhoods. “So anywhere somebody can put something together, they’re dropping things in and getting good money for it.”

The concept of inner-city infill housing development is not a new one. For years, cities have tried to attract developers to neighborhoods where vacant lots and deteriorated buildings have dominated the landscape. By selling the land at reduced rates or offering other incentives, city officials have hoped that new development would breathe new life into the sometimes-blighted neighborhoods.

Recently, through Boston’s Home Again Program, Taylor Smith Properties of Mission Hill was selected to develop 24 units of housing on scattered vacant lots in Roxbury and Mattapan. Also, officials in Revere have been working on plans to develop some of the vacant lots in residential neighborhoods in the municipality as well.

Suburban Infills

Now, however, infill developments are no longer just for companies looking to build low- to moderate-income housing. Influenced by the red-hot real estate market, builders now are having no trouble building and selling market-rate units on lots once thought to be unusable.

In Arlington, for example, Modern Continental is in the midst of constructing 22 market-rate townhouses on the site of a former vacant warehouse just off of Masachusetts Avenue on Mill Street. The development, known as Cutter Mills, offers units priced between $379,000 and $429,000.

“There was an old warehouse on the site. We tore it down, and now we’re putting in housing,” said Robert Shepard, vice president of Modern Continental in Cambridge. “The location is great, the community is great, and obviously we figured the numbers are going to work.”

Proof that the demand exists for this type of infill housing is evident, Shepard said. Twelve of the 22 units have already been sold, even though the units right now are nothing more than concrete foundations in the ground, with framing not scheduled until next month.

“There’s a big need for urban housing right now,” Shepard said, explaining the popularity of infill housing. “People are tired of making the longer commute; they’re moving back to the city.”

In addition to Arlington, Shepard said Modern Continental has done several other housing projects in the Back Bay, Beacon Hill and other Boston neighborhoods.

In Jamaica Plain, Goodman is in the process of completing his latest development, The Armory Street Foundry Studios, on the site of an old scrap yard. Of the 23 artists’ studio-type units, seven have been set aside as affordable housing.

Surge in Demand
Tom Philbin of the Boston Department of Neighborhood Development said the number of inquiries his office has received regarding vacant parcels has skyrocketed recently. “We’re seeing greater demand,” he said. “It has definitely picked up more with the Realtors that are calling about land. I think there are more calls now than at any time before.”

Philbin added that Mayor Thomas M. Menino has made it his priority to try to dispense of some of the city-owned vacant parcels so they can be used for infill development purposes. “We have about 2,500 parcels that are city-owned. Many of them are not buildable, but we’re in the process [taking inventory of] all the properties and assessing them.

“The parcels that are deemed buildable will be posted on the Internet, and we’ll make them available to private parties that want to develop them,” Philbin said.

Shepard said his company sees several advantages to developing infill housing projects in cities and towns. “[Arlington] is an established community. People have a desire to live there,” he said. “We’re not going out pioneering somewhere, setting up a brand-new community out past [Interstate] 495 and trying to get people to move there.”

He added that in general, bringing in new development often helps lead to the revitalization of an area, and in Arlington specifically, the town worked with the company to make the project successful.

Other advantages cited by developers included the fact that water, sewer and other utility lines are already established in urban areas, cutting down on connection costs. Also, infill projects usually don’t have to deal with wetlands or other issues commonly encountered in more rural locations.

However, several disadvantages were also cited.

“There’s a positive feature for any neighborhood in that the building gets to be maintained and you get to see old properties renewed, but downside is gentrification, and there is inevitably a connection between that and new developments,” Goodman said. “The key to minimizing that effect is to ensure there is an affordable component in the project, and in a strong climate like this, it’s easier to do a mixed-income project because it’s not hard to find buyers at the high end willing to pick up the extra cost.”

Shepard said coordinating work in a smaller space such as an infill development can also be challenging. “You’ve got the tight logistics of the site,” he said. “You don’t really have a lot of room to work with. It makes construction harder.”

“A lot of the parcels are challenging for one reason or another,” Goodman said. “Either they’re small, sometimes they have ledge, they’re oddly-shaped, or they’re contaminated from what had been there before.

“It’s rare you’ll find undisturbed soil, so much of Boston is just filled-in [soil] to begin with.”

Goodman added that some of the tougher obstacles facing infill developers are neighborhood residents who have become used to having the undeveloped parcels in the area. “The biggest problem is everyone says they want green space or pocket parks,” he said. “Although there is a strong emphasis that people need housing and they realize these are the only parcels left.”